Radio Script #172
Little Talks On Common Things
January 25, 1953
A few weeks ago’ mentioned that I recently had access to the Watervi! Ie tax assessments of many years ago. ‘told you about the road supervisors and their collection of Taxes. tet’s take a look tonight at the assessments of pro..,. perty made for tax purposes. On these were based the road tax, the school tax, and a II other town Taxes.
The records for The year 1830 are typical of those early days in Waterville. That, let me remi nd you, . was 123 years ago, when Andrew. Jackson had Just be … come Presi dent of theUnj t~d States. ,t .was 19 yea rs be fo re the ra i I road rea~ ched Waterville, and manyWatervi I Je men who became heroes in the Ci vl’.Warwere not yet born.~ ButWaTervi l1ewas already a. thriving vi llage and had cO~s1derable taxable prope’rty::,
What was taxed in 1830?Prettynearly everythfrig — fand, buildlngs;c,r0ps .. stocks and bonds, ~neY~j2a+.~pte … est, stock in frade, and anything else the as $'” ‘,'”,’I’ ” essors could uncover. Dr. Moses Appleton, who once charged a fellow citizen two doJ lars for’Ucuring Y01Jtfami Iyot the itch’l, was assessed at $5,,972. His e,’:,,}; I isted property included 140 acres of land, 7 head’of cattle, two horses .. two swine, five shares of bank stock, six shares in the new tol J bridge, two car.”. riages, $300 out at ,interest, and what is somewnatmysterlously called an in .. come fund of $1,000, The doctor’s total tax in 1830 was $41.44.
Much wealthier than Dr. Appleton were those long friendly rivals, NathanielGllman and Timothy Boutel/e •. The latter’s 1830 tax was $142.72, and Gilman’s was $132.13. At that time Gi Iman had not the wea Ith that made him Watervi lie ‘$ richest man, but he was on the way to it. Although much of his property was outside of Watervi lie, in fiveyears.1 by 1835, he had so increased his local holdings that his tax was then $300 compared with Boutel Ie’s $172.
Interesting/y enough, the biggest taxpayer in 1830 was neither GJlman nor Boute I Ie. I twas Simeon Mathews, whose tax exceeded e i the r of the othe rs by mora than a hundred dollars. While Boutelle was paying $142 and Gilman $132, Mathews paid $246. 5i meon Mathews was the son 6f Jabez Mathews, whose fi rst sight of Water~ vi lIe had been when he passed through the p lace as a member of Arnold’sexpedt”” tion to Quebec. In fact Simeon was born tnGray, Maine, Just after his father started on that i I I-fated expedl t Ion — on June 8, 1785. In 1794, at the age of 9, Simeon came with his father TO Watervil Ie, where Jabez kept a tavern on .the north side ofSi Iver street .. about where the old Redington Furn.iture store now .stands. The building ,which M~theY’s used a~ a tavern had been buHt by Dr,. Dba.., qiahWJ II lams in 1795 .and lssaid to have been the first two-story house on the· Wate.r ville. side of the river.
Whell S i~orl gtewto’manryoo’dhewent Into partnership with ,Nathaniel!?; Iman .. ancj together they operated a sTore about where the Montgomery Ward bullding now ,- \:,..’ ,- . ‘. ~tand~. They did an’,mmense’ bU5,l ness for so smafJ a town. ‘”. I n one year they shippeclout on the old river boats 2,000 bushels of wheat, 4,000 of corn.~ _.and 20 ,000 .. ofoq ts, a I J bought from fa rmers within a few miles.
Irf1826 Slmaon ~athews .but 1T Tneb i 9 mansion house onS II ver Street .. later the home of George Fred Terry. Perhaps through the years his best rememberedact was his planting the long I fne of shade trees on both sides of 51 Iver Street. Simeon Mathews had a son who was given the Hmelfght on this program three yea rs ago — Edward Mathews, the young man whom Dr. Va lorus Coo I t dge murde red on that September nl ght 1 n 1847. We II, anyhow, Simeon r~athews .. store keeper, sh i pper I bui I der of a mans i on, father ofa murdered son, was Waterville’s heaviest taxpayer in 1830.
The total Watervi lie assessment 1 n that year was $582,065. The tax rate was 7.3 mi I Is, $7.30 on a thousand. That indeed seems to have been a high rate for those times. In 1828 it was only 7 mi’ Is flat, and in 1834 it WqS 6* mills, and in 1835 it went way down to 5.7 mi 115. In 1830 IA/atervi lie had exactly 400 po II tax payers. Each was taxed $2.08, 75 cents for highway tax and $1.33 for 5 tate 1 county and othe r town taxes.
~”ho were the big taxpayers in 1830 besides ~1athews and Gilman and Boutelle? They were Asa Redington, founder of that famous v4atervi lIe fami Iy, who paid $103; Dr. Daniel Cook, who had been an Army surqeon In the \~ar of 1812 t and who had then come to Watervil Ie to associate in the practice of Dr. Moses Appleton, and who built the first brick house in Watery; lie — his tax was $90; and Daniel 1,100r, whose sons became Waterv i II e ‘s best known sh i p b u i I de rs, who pa i d $82. Baxter Crowell, who isn’t even listed in the Centennja I History of Waterv! Ile,_ paid $80. How a man could have that much property and yet leave no record for local historians is a mystery. James Stackpole and James Shorey each paid a tax of more than $70.
Stackpole was one of the real pioneers of this region. Descendant of the first James Stackpole, who had come to Boston from Ireland in 1680, our James came to \’Iinslow from his birthplace in Biddeford exactly a hundred years later, in 1780. Ten years later he established his home on the west side of the river” one of the first settlers to bui Id a house on the Watervi lIe side. He bui It a sawmi I I on the Messalonskee, kept a store, bui It several Ships, and was captain of \t/atervi lie’s first mi I it/a company. His commission in the mi litia carried the same signature as the first, name on the Declaration of tndependence, that of John Hancock. On November 25, 1812 he wrote in his diary: “1 am this day 80 years old and carried a bushel of corn on my back to the mi IJ.
It was not this James Stackpole who paid the 1830 tax. He died in 1824 at the very ripe age of 92. It was his son, James Stackpole .Irq who paid the col lectors $78.48 on his property in 1830. He too was a lumberman, trader, and builder of Ships. His store was where the Lockwood No.1 mill now stands.
As for J ames Shorey 1 he, I j ke Baxte r Crowe I I., is not ment i oned in the l.entennial History. The Shoreys and the Shores originally the same name-··, were numerous, and I suspect James Shorey was one of that important \~atervi lie faml IV. Early in this talk we mentioned the i temsi n Dr. Moses App J eton I s assess·· ment in 1830. Let’s look at some of the others. Here is Timothy Boutelle’s:
6 houses, 4 barns, 5 shops and stores, 12 tons hay, 15 acres pasture,. 7 acres wood, 2 acres for roads, 75 shares bank stock, 7 shares in the toll bridge. 10 acres ti Ilage; 35 bu. corn, 25 bu, wheat, 40 bu, oats, 100 bu. potatoes, 8 acres mow i ng I and, 20 ounces p I ate.
That laST item is interesting, and only one other Watervi lie taxpayer is simi larly I isTed. He, of course, was Nathaniel Gi lman, and in that ownership of si IVer he and Boutelle were equals; each was taxed for 20 ounces of plate. Gilman’s list included 7 hoftSes, 5 barns, 4 shops and stores, 10 tons hay. t5 acres pasturage, 200 acres wood, 10 acres un improved .. 8 acres reserved for roads, 261 shares of bank stock, 10 shares in the toll bridge, 6 acres ti Ilage” 50 bu. corn, 1 00 bu. oats ,and 150 bu. potatoes.
For most of these taxpayers potatoes was the big crop. Boutelle’s hundred bushels and Gi Iman’s 150 were small lots compared with some of their neighbors. James Stackpole had 300 bushels, Asa Redington 350f Baxter Crowell 400, and AIpheus Lyon the unbel ievable quantity of 2,500 bushels.
The Redington property was alre,ady beginning to be shared. Samuel and Wi II i am each owned one-ha I f of a shop; each had five shares of bank stock. S i I as shared with Asa Jr. the ownership of a lath machine which produced 300~OOO laths annua II y.
John (‘..001 p brother of Aunt Hannah Cool, who was vari ous Iy known as a kind Iy lady and as the local witch, was taxed for three houses and a barn -” no crops, no bank stock, no toll bridge shares, no lands. That singles him out as an unusual case for a hundred and twenty years ago. James Hasty had no oats or corn or potataes~ but pa ida tax on a stock in trade va I ued at $1,000 and on money out at interest? $500. He had salted away also ten shares of bank stock and four shares in the toll bridge.
That bridge, by the way, was the first bridge across the Kennebec between \lJinslow and \~atervi lIe, It had been bui It less than five years and was already beginning to pay for itself when the great flood of 1832 washed it away. By the way, let ‘sgee who owned the Watervi lie Bank in 1830. I ts stock seems to have been pretty widely distributed in small holdings, but Nathaniel Gi Iman owned 261 shares, the Redingtons 110, Boutelle 75, Crowell 30 and Stackpole 20. No one else in the 1830 Waterville tax fist owned more than 12. From a record kept by Dr. Appleton himself we learn the assessed value of these bank and toll bridge shares. Appleton’s five shares in the bank were carried at $350, $70 a share; his six shares in the toll bridge were down for $200, $33 1/3 a share.
We hear so often that management and labor are always enemies, that they can do nothing together, I think we ought to cal I repeated attention to the mini ature train that had such a prominent place in the celebration of the Watervi lIe Sesquicentennial last summer. After its fi rst appearance in the pageant and the big parade of the Watervi lIe celebration; the train was shown at Rockland, at lewiston, at Skowhegan# at Scarboro and other places. The bui Iding of that unique train was a wonderful example of cooperation in industry. Bui It exactly to scale, it consisted of an authentic repl ica of an early locomotive, tender~ box car, coach and caboose. Coupled up, it made a train 65 feet long,
The idea of the;tra I n was conce.i ved by Shops Supt. Frank H. Bennett of the />’1a j ne Centra I’s major shops in ‘;tatervi lie. The draft; n9 room then I aid out the plans under Laurence Sparrow, and the actual construction was supervised by rllli I I Foreman Ernest Bickford~ whose chief assistants on this job were R. L Johnson1 Chris Carstenson and Ray Libby.
The locomoti ve was bui It on one of the tractors of the stores department. Reminiscent of the first train to pullout of ~~atervTlle at 8:45 A.M. on Decem~ ber 3,1849, this locomotive bore the number 3 , as did the old A&K engine on that historic morning 103 years ago. The little engine had a real locomotive bell, and its brass whistle was taken from an old snow plow.
The wheels of both engine and cars were sawed from plywood to imitate real car wheels. The boxcar was bui It by Leon Day and Ted Jewett and was completely authentic down to the shining black grab irons, ladders and hand-brake wheels.
The passenger coach had the old fashioned overhang roof, familiar on early rai froad cars. It even had miniature shades at the windows. An authentic oldtime coach down to the ‘ast deta j I, it was the hand i work of Foreman Gh i ck Poo- I er, Glen McCorri son and Roy ‘flebste r • . The color scheme and antique lettering on the whole train was worked out by Ken stevens, assisted by Earl fJlcCaslin and Harvey Dusty. AI’ the various builders depended a lot on the road’s old timers for sug~ gestions. Frank Bennett himself has a rich fund of memory about the rolling stock of by-gone days, as do also such men as Percy Grant and old-time conductor Ned Tra inor.
The numerals on the I ittle cars, as well as the No.3 on the locomotive, had spec i a lsi gn j f i cance. The boxca r date, 1887, rep resents the year the Wate rvi lie shops of the Maine Central were founded, and the car number~ 1862, is the year the Maine Central itself was incorporated, born from the consolidation of the A&K and the P&K. The number 90 on the caboose stood for the 90 years that the rvJa i ne Centra I has served the state of Ma i ne.
Everyone who has seen it will not soon forget this miniature train, but· even more close Iy will it be cheri shed and remembered by both the management and the workers of the Ma i ne Centra I Ra i I road as an examp Ie of coope rat ion in industry at its best.
Year: 1953